Just a little blog about me and mine.

Blueberry Cottage Weekend August 18, 2009

PL and I had a great weekend getaway with our friends Robert and Julia at Blueberry Cottage in North Carolina. They have known about Mountain Farm, where the cottage is located, for some time now and have stayed there a few times before. It’s a farm with organic dairy goats and lavender, and they also keep some llamas, rabbits and chickens around. Several months ago they suggested that we all go together as an end of the summer weekend away, but that seems forever ago now that we planned it and somehow it’s already the end of the summer. All of the pictures I took during the weekend are here.

We left Friday afternoon and got up to the cabin in the early evening. After letting the dogs run around a bit, they wandered off and we couldn’t find them. Some mild panic ensued followed by some howling by them and then us going in search of them. I stayed at the house in case they came back, and the rest of our gang (including Aggie the 9 pound pug who was smart enough to not get lost and her parents smart enough to keep her on a leash) went looking for the dogs. Oliver came back after a bit, panting harder than I’ve ever seen him. O’Malley was finally found and looked VERY relieved to see his mom–it seems like he was tracking us back to the house. After that scare no more dogs got to out without a leash in the dark–and they never went too far the rest of the weekend when we did let them roam free. With everyone home safe and sound, we sat down to a dinner of pesto pasta salad with grilled chicken, peas and potatoes that I made for the weekend and some potato chips and wine and beer.

Saturday morning we got up at the shockingly early for all of us time of 9am and had a breakfast casserole and cinnamon rolls. Then we drove to the nearest town of Burnsville to their Farmer’s Market and to look in some of the downtown shops a bit. It was a really nice market with lots of local produce. We came away with some blackberry vinegar, blackberries, green beans and black cherry jam. When we got back to the farm we went to the gift shop there and looked at the many varieties of lavender soaps and other lavender goodies–and left there with some fresh goat cheese and a giant organic heirloom tomato. Back at the cabin we ate our tomato and goat cheese along with some sandwiches. We spent some time reading (and I spent some time napping–not sure about anyone else) and then went out walking. Robert and Julia took Aggie down to the river and once I woke up, PL and I took O’Malley and Oliver over to the farm to see the goats and the labyrinth and then walked down to the river. We all met back up on the road on the way to the river and then stood around laughing at our dogs having a blast in the river. Oliver proved himself to be a fantastic swimmer, and O’Malley is less of a natural but had a blast anyway running around.

For dinner that night we had a lasagna brought up from the DeKalb Farmer’s market along with some tomatoes from our garden and the green beans we bought that morning. PL and I started a pretty great campfire and we all sat outside and drank wine and made smores (with the brilliant idea of mine to use dark chocolate). When the wine was gone and the fire starting to die town, we went inside and played a game of cards before we all went to sleep.

Sunday morning we made biscuits and sausage for breakfast and also scrambled eggs (with blue and brown shells) that the folks at the farm gave us from their chickens. Robert added some of the goat cheese and rosemary he bought into the eggs. We spent the rest of the morning before we had to leave just sitting around reading.